Rubbish day at work

Made a decision about 2 months ago, and realised today that I missed a single line in a document. This line means essentially that all the work a 10 person team has done is pretty much pointless, and needs revisiting.

And it's all my fault for missing that one line. Probably cost in excess of £100k to fix.

Feeling pretty rubbish at the moment, missing a ride to wallow in my stupidity.

My plan of action is to tell as many people as I can and see what we can do about it, basically I'll be seen as a total idiot, but maybe we'll get to do it right, but probably not as the timescales are too tight.

Yeah mistakes happen, it's how you handle it that makes or breaks you.

I was told at 7am that I wasn't needed on a particular assignment - great, I can go home, except that I've got a raging infection in my right eye. I could hardly see and I had to drive 2.5 hours home.. that was fun..

I think it's generally assumed that I'm in a position that should know what I'm doing, and these kinds of mistakes just shouldn't happen. I think the fact that I've been doing the work of at least 3 or 4 people probably means that mistakes are going to happen, I used to post on STW all the time, now I never have the chance as I'm just far too busy in meetings and doing stuff.

That's tough. But as some one ignorant of these things I'm amazed that there is no double check

I think my dad had a major work muck up once. I think it was a calculation. He said the only way to make no mistakes was to do nothing, which is obviously pointless and stupid. One really can't work error free

With 8 fire engines, a super fire crane thing and 3 command cars around me at 1am I pondered what new career I fancied next. 6hrs later in the bosses office he told me mistakes happen, no worries - just put it back together again. Very relieved but also a bit sad - some of my ideas the previous night had been quite exciting!

I'm surprised by all the people that think it should have bee signed off or double checked. If you are in a position of responsibility then sometimes you are the person who is supposed to notice! Anyway, face it, try and solve it as best you can. How you react to failure is far more indication of a person than how you react to success.

If you worry too much about making mistakes you may never take the opportunity to make anything.

Come the day, we all set off from Manchester at 7am, me sat in the passenger seat of the Directors car. It was halfway up the M6 that I realised I had actually forgot to send out the invitation letters to the delegates.

A really awful sinking feeling overtook me and I had to carry on chatting to the Director, enthusing about the day all the way up to Kendal and into the car-park.

Got there and there was a perfectly arranged venue, fresh pastries laid out, steaming hot tea and coffee laid on, powerpoint and projector at the ready....and an empty room.

Come the day, we all set off from Manchester at 7am, me sat in the passenger seat of the Directors car. It was halfway up the M6 that I realised I had actually forgot to send out the invitation letters to the delegates.

Now that is fekin genius!!!!

Id have had to persist for at least a while. See if you can get every other fecker sacked

I'll add that if you feel you're being criticised for making the mistake, part of the lessons learned process you initiate should be about establishing a checking system.

When we're dealing with commercial arrangements here then something of a 100k value would have at least 4 people's eyes going over it. If we're into the multi-million pound agreement territory then generally any documentation will have a large team reviewing it before it sees the light of day. It's not lack of confidence in the people, it's a result of being bitten by mistakes like this that anyone can make.

Come the day, we all set off from Manchester at 7am, me sat in the passenger seat of the Directors car. It was halfway up the M6 that I realised I had actually forgot to send out the invitation letters to the delegates.

Did the fact that you hadn't had a single response from anyone to say they were coming not trigger alarm bells?

Before I was qualified, I was up all night drafting papers for a Mareva injunction which we planned to have heard the next day. It's a pretty serious injunction (freezes assets) and one which the court doesn't take lightly, particularly as we were having ours heard ex parte (i.e. the other party didn't even know about it).

I got the documents into court and the High Court judge had agreed to hear us at 3pm.

When we turned up, the very serious looking judge asked who drafted the papers. Everyone looked at me and I must have looked like I had seen a ghost.

He asked me what kind of injunction I thought we were applying for and I very quietly said "Minerva Injunction". He said "Yes, that's what you've written throughout these papers. Are you aware that it's actually called a Mareva Injunction and the Minerva is the name of the pub next door to the court?"